


Life is a Highway

by glorious_spoon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Kidnapping, POV Outsider, References to Underage Prostitution, References to Underage Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-12-15 18:52:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/852883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean and an old acquaintance on a lonely stretch of highway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a spin-off of fleshflutter's amazing fic, [The Old Block](http://fleshflutter.livejournal.com/4337.html). The backstory and the odious Stevie belong to her and are used with permission.

The butt of the shotgun slams into Stevie's temple while his right foot is still in midair over the doorstep, and the chilly autumn dusk slides away in a whirl of dull color. His cheekbone connects hard with the porch railing, and that's the last thing he's aware of for a long time.

***

He comes awake, abruptly, to a faceful of lukewarm beer. There's a sock stuffed in his mouth--a dirty sock, by the taste of it--and his hands and feet are bound with coarse rope. His head is hanging toward his lap. From the dull, throbbing ache in his shoulders, he's been in this position a while.  
  
"You'd better not have killed him," says a voice somewhere to his left. Male. Young, from the sound of it, and kind of impatient.  
  
"He's not dead." The second voice is even deeper, and something about it sends a thread of recognition winding through the back of Stevie's mind. He tries to grab at it, but it slips away just as the voice remarks, "Which is too bad, really."  
  
"We need him."  
  
"Yeah, yeah." A gusty sigh, and then the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor. It stops in front of him, and a rough hand grips his jaw and forces his head up. Stevie tries to flinch away, and only realizes his mistake when the man chuckles unkindly. "Yup, he's awake. Showtime."  
  
He considers keeping his eyes shut, but it's a little late for that now. Still, it takes several seconds for his surroundings to swim into focus. He's in a room, a cheap motel room by the look of it. His feet are bound to the legs of a heavy wooden chair, and there's a dark-haired young man straddling an identical chair in front of him. He's dirty and unshaven, and there's a half-full bottle of cheap beer dangling from one hand. Behind him is another young man, shaggy haired and just as grimy, sitting on the edge of a table and cleaning a shotgun with quick, competent motions.  
  
"Hey there, Stevie." Stevie doesn't like the way his name sounds in the man's mouth, like it's an insult all on its own, and he really doesn't like the way the man is smiling at him. It's not a nice smile. "We need to ask you a couple of things. Now, I'm gonna take the sock out of your mouth, and if you start yelling I'll break your neck. You think you can try to be smart, here?"  
  
He waits for Stevie to nod before yanking the makeshift gag out of his mouth. Stevie coughs, licks his lips with a tongue that tastes like dirty cotton. When he speaks, his voice is a frightened, rasping whisper. "My wallet's in my back pocket. Take it. Take whatever you want."  
  
"We already did, actually," says the shaggy-haired man mildly. "But thanks."  
  
"What do you want from me?"  
  
"Information," says the short haired one. "We might even let you live." His smile widens into a dimpled grin that would be charming if it weren't for his eyes, which are as green and cold as two jade rocks.  
  
"I don't have any information," Stevie mutters.  
  
"Oh, don't sell yourself short, Stevie. I bet you know all kinds of things about all kinds of things."  
  
"Dean," says the shaggy-haired guy sharply. "Would you stop fucking around and interrogate the man already?"  
  
Dean. Stevie files that away for future reference. Dean with the dark hair and the green eyes and the naggingly familiar face. The name feels familiar too, but once again, recognition slips out of his grasp.  
  
Dean glances over his shoulder at the other guy, rolls his eyes extravagantly. "You know, we could just leave him for it. Not like he doesn't have it coming."  
  
For  _it._  A tendril of real fear winds its way into Stevie's gut and ties itself into a cold, hard knot. Whatever  _it_  is, he wants nothing to do with it.  
"Look," he says, trying to keep his voice soft and reasonable. It's harder than it should be when his tongue feels like it's been shrink-wrapped to the roof of his mouth. "I don't know what you think I did, but--"  
  
"Shut the fuck up," Dean snarls. It's shocking and more than a little scary, the way he shifts from lazy insolence to fury in the space of one breath. If the sudden venom in his voice wasn't enough to make Stevie recoil, the big .45 that's shoved under his chin sure as hell does the trick. It's a sickeningly familiar feeling, and suddenly he knows why Dean's name and face ring a bell.  
  
"Dean," he says, and Dean's eyes narrow. Stevie looks past him to the other man, who's busy putting the shotgun back together, too-long bangs falling into his eyes. He's a big guy, even bigger than Dean, but now Stevie can place that floppy hair and the catlike tilt of those dark eyes. "And this must be little Sammy. He's grown up."  
  
The backhand comes out of nowhere, hard enough to snap his head back and make him see stars, and maybe he really does black out for a second, because for an instant he's on a dark highway at night, shoving a spitting, struggling armload of fourteen-year-old boy over the hood of his car  
  
 _"Take your fucking hands off me! I'll fucking kill you!"_  
  
It's weird, the way it echoes in his head, clear and perfect as a bell, the small, broken noise Dean made when Stevie slammed his face into the trunk, the slender line of his back and his sweet, fragile mouth, smooth warm skin under his hands.  
  
And then he's blinking tears out of his eyes and lifting his head to look at the man that boy has become. There's nothing fragile about his stubbled jaw or the muscular slope of his shoulders, but the most unnerving part is his intent, unblinking gaze. "Oh," he says, mouth twisting into something that isn't even close to a smile. "You do remember me."  
  
Sam looks calmer than Dean--saner, certainly--but not, Stevie notes unhappily, as though he finds anything objectionable about his brother's behavior. "Look, we have two hours until midnight," he says, loading a round into the shotgun and setting it down next to him. "Either we can get him to tell us or you can beat him senseless and we can find the grave on our own. What's it gonna be?"  
  
"I'm still thinking about it," Dean says darkly.  
  
Sam looks up, catches Stevie's eyes. His expression, weirdly enough, makes Stevie think of the two semesters of college he did manage to finish, the impatient way professors used to look at him that always made him feel fumbling and stupid. "Steve, just tell us where you buried him. Then this'll all be over."  
  
"Don't know what you're talking about," Steve says with all the bravado he can muster. Dean slaps him again, hard.  
  
"You expect us to believe there's more than one of you fucking creeps trolling that stretch of highway?"  
  
"You know, there could be," Sam interjects thoughtfully. "The other accident victims all had young boys in their cars. Could just be a coincidence, but..."  
  
Dean looks over at him, purses his lips thoughtfully, and stands up. "Okay," he says, and jerks his chin at Stevie. "So we use him as bait. If it wasn't him, then no harm, no foul. If it was--"  
  
Sam chews his lip, and for a second he looks like a scared, uncertain kid. Then the impression is gone, as quickly as it came. "Sure." He looks at Stevie consideringly, and Stevie remembers his little ten-year-old hands steadying a gun out on that highway. "Okay. Bait."


	2. Chapter 2

They cut the ropes and manhandle him out of the chair. For one brief, crazed moment Stevie considers making a break for it, but this isn't like last time, when it was just the gun tipping the precarious balance of power between him and a couple of scrawny kids.  
  
"Look," he says again as Sam binds his hands tightly behind his back. "I'm sorry, okay? What I did, it was wrong. I'm in therapy."  
  
"I bet," Dean says from the kitchenette. He's immersed in some bizarre ritual involving a box of salt, several empty buckshot shells, and another pistol-grip shotgun, the twin of the one Sam now has slung casually over one shoulder. "I'm sure those photos we found on your computer were just part of your self-actualization process, right?"  
  
"We ransacked your apartment," Sam explains helpfully, with an extra-hard yank on the rope.  
  
Stevie spent two weeks perfecting the protection on those files. These two can't have been in his apartment more than a couple of hours. This is looking less and less like revenge and more like--he doesn't even know what the hell it looks like. "Who  _are_  you people?"  
  
"If I were you," Dean says, "I'd shut the hell up before we decide to shove another one of Sam's socks in your mouth. His feet can get pretty nasty."  
  
"Toe-jam," Sam agrees solemnly, and Dean snorts.   
  
"Coast clear?"  
  
Sam twitches the curtain to one side and glances out. Over his shoulder, Stevie can see a parking lot dimly lit by yellow streetlamps. There's an old black muscle car parked right in front of the window, but other than that the lot is empty. "We're good. You done?"  
  
Dean loads six shells into the shotgun and pockets the rest. "Yeah. Let's get out of here before King Pervert here decides to start making trouble."  
  
His voice is rich with disgust, and so is the pointed glare he directs at Stevie as he holsters his gun. It makes Stevie want to say something snide. Like Dean's such a goddamn saint; bastard kidnaps him, breaks into his apartment and hacks into his computer and he still thinks he's got some kind of moral high ground. Fucking hypocrite.  
  
He's a fucking hypocrite with a gun, though, so Stevie keeps his mouth shut as they haul him out to the car, doesn't even struggle when Dean shoves him into the backseat. It smells like old leather and burning plastic, and he can feel as much as hear the sound of the big V8 engine rumbling to life.  
  
Sam's driving, and Dean fiddles with the tape deck, cranking up Metallica until Stevie's ears pop. He can still hear shreds of their conversation, but it might as well be code for all the sense he can make of it.   
  
"--hunters, not police officers and I'm not doing the vigilante justice thing, okay?"  
  
"Vigilante justice?" Dean's drumming his fingers rhythmically against the armrest, but the rest of his body is tense and still. "Dude, our whole _job_  is vigilante justice. I can't believe we're actually having this conversation now."  
  
Sam says something else to that, but a pothole jars Stevie's head against the window, and the world spins out like a tape on a loose reel. It's several minutes before his surroundings slide back into place again.  
  
"--killed him in the first place," Dean is saying.  
  
"We don't know that." There's a kind of long-suffering patience in Sam's voice that makes Stevie think that this is his usual role, running interference for Dean.  
  
 _"You_  don't know that."  
  
"Neither do you."  
  
A snort. "Yeah. Whatever."  
  
"Dean, I'm serious. Whatever he did to you--"  
  
"You saw what he did to me."  
  
"Not everything," Sam says in a subdued voice. "I didn't see everything."  
  
"Jesus Christ," Dean explodes. "What do you need, the Oprah monologue?"  
  
"All I'm saying is--"  
  
"It was enough, okay? Shawn Fenton is dead, and this scumbag had something to do with it. I know it. And if anyone else dies over this, I swear to God--"  
  
"...okay," Sam sighs. Stevie, blinking and groaning and clawing his way up to awareness, can hear the resignation in his voice.  
  
Clearly, Dean can too. "Don't fucking humor me, Sammy."  
  
Stevie pushes himself into a sitting position, and the grunt that escapes his teeth at the effort seems to remind the two of them of his presence. Dean stiffens, then tosses a sharp smirk over his shoulder.  
  
"How you doing back there, Stevie? Comfy?"  
  
A semi truck rushes by in the other lane, headlights turning the trees on either side of the road into tall, glowing phantoms silhouetted against the night. This is the same highway he drove down all those years ago with fourteen-year-old Dean holding a gun on him and little Sammy guzzling soda in the back seat. He hasn't been on this road in years. Not since--  
  
He's not thinking about that. He never knew the boy's name, but he still remembers the smooth blond hair and delicate, fluting bones, the soft mouth and too-pretty eyes. Like Dean had, back when they first met and before adulthood fucked him up.  
  
It was an accident. An accident. He never meant to hurt anybody, but the boy struggled, and then the boy choked, and there was nothing he could do. It's not his fault. It's not.  
  
He buried the little body out on a lonely stretch of highway, not far from here.   
  
"I didn't mean to hurt him," he whispers.  
  
In the front seat, Dean laughs harshly. "Oh, now we get to it."  
  
Sam slaps his leg, hard, and catches Stevie's eyes in the rearview mirror. "Where did you bury him, Steve?" he asks urgently. "Where's the body?"  
  
"Why should I tell you? You're just gonna kill me anyway."  
  
"We're not going to kill you," Sam says in that same earnest, trust-me voice.  
  
"That's debatable," Dean mutters.  
  
"Dean,  _shut up."  
  
_ "If I tell you, will you let me go?" He knows it's a desperate ploy, but if he can get them to let him out of the car, maybe he can get back to town before they call the police. Maybe call the police on  _them_  instead. He's a good, upstanding citizen; the sheriff will take his word over that of a couple of filthy drifters.   
  
Dean twists in his seat to face Stevie. The dull glow of the dashboard lights carves deep shadows under his cheekbones and into the cleft of his chin. He looks like the flawed, fucked-up older ghost of the boy Stevie picked up in a roadside diner all those years ago, right down to the incredulous smile twisting his mouth. "Just how stupid do you think we are?"  
  
Stevie licks his lips. "I didn't mean to hurt that kid. Shawn Fenton, right? It was an accident, okay? I don't want any trouble--"  
  
"Sucks to be you, Stevie, because you got a shitload of trouble right now."  
  
"He  _choked,"_  Stevie says desperately. "I swear to God, it was an accident. I never hurt anybody else--"  
  
"Funny, that's not how I remember it."  
  
"I wasn't going to hurt you. I was going to  _pay--"_  
  
He doesn't even see Dean move, but suddenly the muzzle of the .45 is resting on the bridge of his nose. The barrel looks huge from this angle, and the rest of his sentence dies in his throat.  
  
"You are one sick son of a bitch." Dean sounds almost amazed, but his grip on the gun is steady. "You have any idea how many accidents that kid has caused because of what you did?"  
  
 _What the hell are you talking about,_  Stevie wants to say, but his mouth might as well be locked shut. Dean stares at him for several more seconds, then shakes his head, lowers the gun, and turns back around. Sam murmurs something that Stevie can't hear, and for the next several miles there's silence.  
  
And then the boy appears.


	3. Chapter 3

He's a slender blond boy of around ten, and he's sitting in the back seat with Stevie, watching him curiously. There's nothing at all freaky about his appearance, beyond the fact that he just fucking  _appeared out of nowhere._  
  
Dean notices the boy a few seconds after Stevie does, and he knocks his brother's arm almost hard enough to send the car careening off the road. Sam glances in the rear-view mirror, swears, and hurriedly pulls over, un-holstering his gun.  
  
"Don't," Dean says sharply. "You'll wreck the upholstery."  
  
It's such a bizarre thing to say that Stevie blinks at him, momentarily forgetting the boy--if it is a boy--sitting next to him. At least until he shifts closer, moving with freakish, impossible speed, and lifts a hand toward Stevie's face. Cold rolls off of him like a tsunami.  
  
"Damn it," Dean says, and aims his own gun at the boy. "Look, kid, its not that I don't sympathize, but I have a strict no-ghost policy in my car. Sorry."  
  
The boy's head whips around toward Dean, who looks irritated and maybe kind of sad but not nearly as freaked out as Stevie thinks the situation warrants.  _"I need a ride,"_  the boy says, and his voice more than makes up for the normalcy of his appearance. It's thin and cold and echoing, and it makes the hair on the back of Stevie's neck stand up.  
  
It's what Shawn Fenton said to Stevie in the bus station where he picked him up. And that's fucking impossible because he's dead. He's  _dead_. Stevie remembers wrapping the tie around his neck, remembers the way the slender frame shuddered and went limp, remembers checking the warm slack throat for a pulse and coming up with nothing. Remembers  _burying_  him, for chrissake. You don't get much deader than that. And it was four years ago. Even if he wasn't dead--even if he did manage to claw himself out of the shallow grave where Stevie put him--he'd be older now. Kids grow up fast.  
  
 _"I need a ride,"_  the boy says again, only he's facing Stevie this time.  _"I need a ride. I'm real good with my mouth, mister. I need a ride."_  
  
"I can take you where you want to go," Stevie mumbles, not even realizing he's talking until he hears the words hanging in the heavy night air. His tongue feels limp and numb.  
  
 _"Anything you want, mister,"_  the boy says. He's smiling, shy and sweet, just like back under the fluorescent lights of that bus station. His eyes are like black pits.  _"Anything. I don't mind the kinky stuff."_  
  
"Christ," Dean mutters. "I do not need to hear this." His hand moves, below the seat where Stevie can't see it, and then he flings a handful of something at the boy. Who  _stutters_ , impossibly, and disappears.  
  
"Thanks," Stevie whispers, staring wide-eyed at the spot where the boy was sitting. He shifts in his seat, and only then remembers that his hands are still bound behind his back.  
  
The glare that Dean gives him is so furious that he can almost feel the flesh peeling back from his bones. "I didn't do it for you, you sick fucking creep."  
  
Sam's looking back at him too, dark eyes unreadable. "Tell us where the grave is before he comes back. We can't hold him off forever."  
  
"And we're not really sure we want to," Dean adds.  
  
"Okay," Stevie says quickly. "Okay, I'll tell you."

***

There's some kind of silent communication going on between the two of them when they pull over on the empty stretch of road that Stevie indicates. He can't decipher it but he can tell it's happening, a conversation of chin-jerks and shrugs and raised eyebrows and the funny thing (if anything at all in this goddamn situation can be considered funny) is that it's just how he remembers from the last time these two nut-jobs kidnapped him. It's not natural, brothers being as close as they are. Not right. And he doesn't much like being in the dark, either.  
  
He gets the gist of it when Dean hauls him out of the backseat by the scruff of his neck and forces him to his knees in the dirt, gun pressed against the back of his head. For a moment, his whole world tastes of fear, because how stupid could he be, how fucking  _stupid--_  
  
But the shot he's bracing for never comes. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Sam circling the car. The trunk creaks open and then slams shut, and Sam walks back into view carrying a long-handled shovel. "Where?"  
  
It isn't until Dean gives him a bone-rattling shake that Stevie realizes the question is directed at him. He opens his mouth to answer, but his voice comes out a dry rasp, so he clears his throat and tries again. "Over there. Behind that big rock."  
  
Out of the way, where no passing motorist would be able so see him, and he remembers the panic riding in the back of his throat, hands sweat-slick on the handle of the shovel he bought at a Wal-Mart while Shawn Fenton's body cooled in his trunk. Out of the way, where nobody will see what they do to him now.  
  
"You're not going to do anything, uh, hasty, are you?" he asks Dean, twisting his head to look up. He manages to turn far enough to catch a glimpse of one long, denim-clad leg before the gun nudges harder at his skull and he turns back hastily. When he speaks again, his voice has gone up about an octave. "Because that would be a really bad idea. I'm friends with several members of the town board, including the sheriff, and my disappearance will be thoroughly investigated."  
  
"Was there some part of 'shut the hell up' that wasn't clear to you?" Dean asks from above his head. His voice is rough and dangerous. "I'm not going to kill you, you stupid loser. Not unless you keep fucking getting on my nerves."  
  
Stevie doesn't believe him, but he can't see any real reason to keep antagonizing him, either, so he shuts up and tries to think. For several long moments the only sound is Sam's shovel hitting the dirt, out of sight behind the rock.  
  
Then a sudden gust of wind, and the boy is standing before them again.  _"I need a ride."_  
  
"What the fuck--" Stevie recoils against the solid heat of Dean's legs, and Dean shoves him away violently, sending him sprawling on his face in the cold, rocky soil. And then the boy is  _right there_ , right in Stevie's face, and he smells like cold and rotting flesh and he's still smiling that sweet, inhuman smile. Now Stevie can see the bruises that the necktie left on his throat, and now, suddenly, he can feel his own throat constricting, skin twisting and breaking under the pressure of an invisible noose and Dean hasn't--fucking--moved. Stevie rolls onto his back, hands scrabbling at his neck and the boy--ghost--flickering to his left, and Dean's just staring down at him, gun held loosely at his side. Just staring. From this angle, he looks as tall as a tree, outline fading into the dark sky.  
  
"Dean, I found it--" Sam's voice seems to be coming from a long ways off, almost impossible to hear over the pounding in his ears. "Dean?" Again, closer. Then, "Shit. What are you--"  
  
 _"Pretty,"_  the boy croons in Stevie's face.  _"So pretty."_  
  
Blackness crowds the edges of his vision and his lungs feel like hot stones in his chest and  
  
and suddenly, it's over. A prickling wave rushes over him like lightening, leaving his skin buzzing, hair standing on end, and the boy vanishes like a wisp of smoke. He can breathe again.   
  
Sam climbs back over the rock, carrying the shovel in one hand and a bottle of lighter fluid in the other. "What the hell was that?"  
  
"What the hell was what?" Dean says back, while Stevie gasps and retches at his feet.  
  
A long silence, then Sam sighs. "Don't be a jerk."  
  
"Whatever. Bitch." There's something that sounds almost like humor in Dean's voice.  
  
"We done here?"  
  
An ungentle nudge turns Stevie over onto his back, and he blinks up at them. They both look like giants in flannel and denim. "What about him?"  
  
"Hey," Sam says. "This is your party." He walks away, and after a minute, Stevie hears the trunk slam shut. Then the passenger side door, and then he's alone in the dark with a guy he's pretty sure wants to kill him.  
  
Dean is still for several long moments before dropping down beside him, face as cool and impassive as a marble saint's.  
  
"Please," Stevie whispers, then shuts up when Dean's expression gets even colder. He's got a knife in his hand, and Stevie watches, hypnotized, as he lifts it.  
  
Then reaches down and slices through the rope binding Stevie's wrists. His hands flop stupidly on the cold ground, half-numb and all useless.   
  
"The cops are at your apartment," Dean says conversationally. Stevie blinks, because the words don't make any sense. He was expecting a bullet. Or threats, at least. "I don't know if they'll be able to pin Shawn Fenton on you, since we had to torch him. But those photos on your computer will be enough to put you away for a long time, and let me tell you, Stevie, prison is not a nice place for child molesters."  
  
Now it's horrified comprehension rising up to choke Stevie. He can taste bile in the back of his mouth. "I'm not--" he whispers. "I'll tell them about you. I'll tell them--"  
  
Dean snorts. "Tell them what? The truth?" He rises gracefully to his feet, pocketing the knife. "Feel free. If you're lucky, maybe they'll shove you in a psych ward instead."  
  
Gravel crunches under his heels as he walks away, and then there's the low roar of the car's engine as it rumbles to life. A warm puff of exhaust, a kick of dust, and then they're gone.

***

It takes half an hour for the police to show up, and when they do they're not real interested in anything Stevie has to say. He talks anyway, words tripping and tumbling out of him while they cuff his hands and read him his rights, confessions forcing their way past his lips while they look away, look away, pleas and whimpers and more truth than he's ever told in his life echoing through the empty space in the back of the squad car.


End file.
